7 



10&'>' 



DISCOUHS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF YM 



COLONIAL HIST( 



EASTEEN AND SOME OF THE SOUT 



^■':i:k':%kM§^^f>-' 



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DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

FEBRUARY 21, 1842, 



COLONIAL HISTORY 



EASTERN AND SOME OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
BY JOB R: TYSON, 

ONE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENTS. 

% 



S PHILADELPHIA: 
PUBLISHED BY JOHN PENINGTON, 169 CHESTNUT STREET. 

1842. 



Y^Vr 



'9. 



C. Sherman, Printer, 19 St. James Street. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Philadelphia, February 22, 1842. 
Sir, 

We have much pleasure in conveying to you the enclosed 
resolutions of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, request- 
ing the publication of your Discourse delivered last evening, and 
of adding the expression of our great gratification in listening 

to it. 

With much regard, 

Your obedient servants, • 

THO. SERGEANT, 
T. M. PETTIT, 
JAMES J. BARCLAY, 

Coinmittee. 

To Job R. Tyson, Esq. 



At a special meeting of the members of The Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania, held in the Lecture Room of the 
Philadelphia Museum, on Monday evening, February 21, 1842, 
after the delivery of the Discourse by Job R. Tyson, Esq. 

On motion of Mr. Barclay, seconded by Judge Pettit, it was 

Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be presented to Mr. 
Tyson for his impressive and eloquent Discoure, and that a copy 
be requested for publication. 

Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to com- 
municate this resolution to Mr. Tyson. 

The meeting appointed Vice-Presidents Sergeant and Pettit, 
and Mr. Barclay the committee. 

On motion the meeting adjourned. 

PETER S. DU PONCEAU, 
Attest, President 

WILLIAM DUANE, JR. 

Secretary pro tern. 



Philadelphia, February 24, 1842. 

Gentlemen, 

Your note of the 22d instant, with the resolutions of the 
Historical Society, requesting a copy of my Discourse for 
publication, has been received. 

I cannot but feel very sensibly the approbation of my col- 
leagues of the Society, and especially the kindness with which 
you, gentlemen, regard my feeble attempt to vindicate what I 
conceive to be, the truth of history. It is this only about which 
I have any solicitude. If I have committed an error in any one 
premise or deduction, or in any one material fact, and the 
mistake have an unjust bearing upon any part of the confede- 
racy, I shall exceedingly regret it. All that it would become 
me to say, is, that I am unconscious of any, after a diligent exa- 
mination and collation of all the authorities within my reach. 

The difficulties of the subject are intrinsic, and arise as much 
from the multiplicity of its topics and details, as the extensive 
range which it embraces. It would have been an easier task to 
swell the matter into a volume, than compress it within the limits 
of a discourse. Many points are rather touched or suggested, 
as necessary branches of the subject, than treated with that ful- 
ness which their importance deserves. In a word, my object 
has been more to awaken attention and stimulate research than 
to satisfy curiosity. 

With these remarks, I place the MS. at the disposal of the 
Society. 

I am, with great regard, 

Your obedient servant, 

J. R. TYSON. 
To the Hon. Thomas Sergeant^ 
Hon. Thomas M. Pettit, 
and James J. Barclay, Esq., 

Committee. 



DISCOURSE 



COLONIAL HISTORY 



EASTERN AND SOME OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 



Mr. President and 

Gentlemen of the Historical Society. 

Ii^r an Address which I had the honour to deUver before 
this Society, a few years ago, I ventured to suggest the 
want of a history of Pennsylvania, during and since the 
eventful era of the Revolution. Those lines of the picture 
w^ere feebly and imperfectly traced, which it would be 
the duty of the historian to fill up and to animate. Per- 
mit me, on the present occasion, to cast a glance behind 
that period, and instead of surveying the great events of 
which it was the epoch, to investigate some of its remoter 
causes. The exploration of this field, leads us not merely be- 
yond the confines of Pennsylvania, not merely to the stamp 
and impost acts, which were the immediate precursors of the 
struggle, but to eras and boundaries more remote and distant. 
I shall humbly submit to the Society, upon an inquiry into the 
historical doctrines which have been disseminated respecting 



6 THE SUBJECT OF FORMER DISCOURSE. 

the origin of our independence, and of the spirit as well as 
form of our political system, whether the integrity of truth 
does not demand a new history of our colonial settlements. 

This subject may be considered upon a casual view, as 
out of the legitimate pale of the researches and speculations 
of a state historical society. But I am invited to its discus- 
sion by its intimate connexion with the topics of my former 
Discourse, and by the relation it bears to the whole subject 
of our domestic history. If any apology is necessary for 
leaving the beaten track of Pennsylvania annals, it is to be 
found in the recent amendment to the Constitution of the 
Society, which widens the circle of our investigations so as 
to include the transactions of the sister states and foreign 
countries. 

The colonies which had united against the parent country 
at the revolution, had no sooner accomplished the object of 
their union, than a spirit was discernible of willingness to 
magnify thjir comparative deserts. While the minds of 
men are heated in contemplating the glory of a great 
exploit, the splendour of an acknowledged victory, many 
candidates will appear to claim the distinction of pro- 
minent and meritorious actors. But the rivalry of even 
ambitious soldiers, has not ventured to arrogate for any 
one state or colony, the extravagant merit of having 
routed the enemy both at Saratoga and Trenton, at 
Monmouth and Yorktovvn. All may challenge a par- 
ticipation in the glory of the heroic deeds wliich were 
done, and of the great spirits who achieved them. No 
state or colony can monopolize this glory. Pennsylvania 
points, among many others, to the merits and sacrifices of 
her Dickinson and Morris, her Thomson and Franklin. 



THE REVOLUTION. 



Massachusetts may justly claim to have struck the first blow 
in the quarrel, to have committed the first overt act of 
defiance to British authority. While to the East belong 
Hancock, Otis, Warren, Quincy, the Adamses, and a host 
of other illustrious names, Virginia bears aloft, even more 
proudly, an assemblage of chosen patriots, at whose head 
stands George Washingtoiv, primus absque secundo. She 
may boast, that without her Washington and Henry, the 
war had ended in the hapless consequences incident to an 
unsuccessful revolt, — in the reproach of rebels and insur- 
gents to the actors, — in the fate of confirmed and hopeless 
subjection to the country. All — the East, the Middle States, 
and the South, — were animated by the same lofty determi- 
nation to resist oppression; all vindicated by their conduct a 
right to a place in that temple, which the genius of freedom 
has consecrated to virtue and to valour. 

But a higher pretension has been set up than the military 
conduct of battles. The historians of the New England 
states contend, that to them belongs the exclusive honour of 
having originated the free principles which followed our 
independence, as a political society, by sowing the seeds 
which gave them birth. They trace them to the great 
principles of liberty, which, as they assert, were discovered, 
fostered, and maintained by their Puritan ancestors. They 
challenge this high glory for those who landed on the Ply- 
mouth Rock in 1620, and for their immediate successors 
who founded Boston, and finally spread themselves over 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the other districts of the 
New England confederacy. 

If these claims be justly founded, they may well appro- 
priate, not the inferior honour of gaining the battles of the 



8 THE REVOLUTION ITS GLORY CLAIMED BY NEW ENGLAND. 

revolution, but the moral triumphs of the whole proud enter- 
prise. They are emphatically the founders of our liberty, 
if we are indebted to them for the discovery of its principles. 
If they struck out the bright and happy idea of the elective 
franchise, and endured those sacrifices and toils insepara- 
ble from the planting and rearing of infant freedom, they 
at once become the unrivalled benefactors of mankind. 

These pretensions are made by eastern writers with 
seriousness, and contended for with ability and fervour. 
They are not confined to an insulated volume, memoir, 
tract, or sermon, but they pervade the historical and mis- 
cellaneous literature of New England. From regular 
histories and biographies, through the gradations of re- 
views, school books, and pamphlets, by means of cen- 
tennial, Plymouth Rock, and Fourth of July orations, 
down to repertories and newspapers, this sentiment of 
having discovered and applied the seminal principles of the 
revolution, is conveyed in every form which fond reve- 
rence or local partiality can assume. Many of those 
documents and books which display the alteram parteniy 
— the other side of the question, — remain inedited, or 
have become so rare as to be inaccessible, except to the 
curious and antiquarian eye.* When it is remembered 
that the eastern writers have had almost the exclusive 
formation of the youthful mind, in this country, for up- 
wards of half a century, it cannot be a matter of surprise, 
that a race of authors is kept up, who, with devoted 
enthusiasm for the perpetuity of this ancestral fame, are 
interweaving it into the body of contemporary literature in 

* Appendix A. 



^ 



THIS CLAIM EXAMINED. 9 

the thousand nameless forms of verse and prose, as if to 
secure its transmission to future times as an axiom of un- 
questioned and admitted history. 

The justice of these assumptions may be examined and 
discussed in this meridian, if any where, without the impu- 
tation of partial prejudices, or selfish motives. The eastern 
and southern colonies, being arrayed, in the times of Charles 
the First and Cromwell, on opposite sides, it is not easy 
for the descendants of either, to view the conduct of the 
other, through a calm and dispassionate medium. But the 
founders of the Province of Pennsylvania, and their suc- 
cessors, did not mingle in those exciting controversies, 
which involved the fate of the Church and State of Eng- 
land. Surveying then the contest from a new and perhaps 
more elevated point, and sufficiently removed by the lapse 
of time, as well as by geographical position from the scene 
of strife, we may assume at least the merit of being more 
impartial and disinterested witnesses. Neither Puritans nor 
Royalists, neither Roundheads nor Cavaliers, but claim- 
ing descent from a different ancestry, and standing on 
neutral ground, we may consider the circumstances and 
events which the disquisition embraces, in a spirit of juster 
criticism and sounder philosophy. 

The problem respecting the oHgin of those principles which 
lie at the base of our political edifice, is purely a proposi- 
tion of history, requiring simply an historical deduction, and 
exclusively within the province of the historian. It is not 
a subject of empty and barren curiosity, but involves a 
question of historical truth, and historical justice. Nothing 
but the blindness resulting from superficial research, or the 
most devoted filial perversity, could induce a belief that the 

2 



10 THE FBEE PRINCIPLES OF ABIERICA 

idea of an elective republic was started or suggested by 
either of the colonies which settled this country. It is an 
historical fallacy almost too obvious for serious discussion. 
But the frequency of its repetition, and the respectability 
of those who maintain it, justify and demand a respectful 
and formal examination of this question, as a branch of the 
ulterior inquiry. 

If we simply point to the Athenian and Lacedemonian 
republics; the Amphictyonic Council and Achaean League; 
the union of the German States, and the Dutch confederacy 
under the Stadtholder; — we find in all these, that the popular 
voice was recognised in nearly pure democracies. If we 
look to the native land of the colonists,— that land in which 
their love of freedom was imbibed — we find the people 
professedly represented in a lower house of Parliament. 
The ideas which these governments suggest, present to us, 
without any great exertion of original thought, all the 
materials of so simple a machinery. The former exhibit 
the recognition of popular sovereignty, and in England we 
see the representative system existing, with no slight infu- 
sion of popular rights. 

But leaving the records of Pagan antiquity for the his- 
tory of modern Europe, let us see whether the doctrine of 
the divine right of kings, and of an arbitrary, irresponsible 
prerogative, had been exclusively preached before the era 
of western colonization. It cannot escape attention that in 
the contests between King and Clergy, lights were struck 
out, at an early period, by which the people were directed 
in their efforts to dissipate the thick gloom which sur- 
rounded them, after the subversion of the Roman Empire. 
Pope Zachary taught the French nation, in the eighth 



DISCOVERED BEFORE ITS COLONIZATION. 11 

century, a lesson which was acted upon by the Italian 
cities in the tenth. St. Thomas of Aquinas, about this 
time, attacked the dogma of the divine right of kings, 
declaring that civii governments are not jure divino, but 
jure humano; that 'princes should he selected on the score of 
personal virtue hy the ichole population; and that all citizens 
were eligible alike to political stations. 

What effect these sentiments may have produced in the 
beautiful plains of Italy, where they were uttered, may be 
conjectured from the remarkable events of which, soon 
after, it became the theatre. The Italian cities began to 
declare themselves independent communities, with all the 
power and attributes, in substance and form, of popular 
sovereignties. Milan led the way in the tenth century, and 
though she suffered for her temerity, the principle of popular 
ascendancy was asserted and maintained. Frederick Bar- 
barossa, about half a century afterwards, demolished the 
walls of Milan, and sowed salt upon its foundations. 

But the spirit of popular liberty, though assailed, could not 
be extinguished. The celebrated League of Lombardy was 
formed by the other free cities of Italy, to protect the con- 
federates against external invasion, and to make common 
cause in rebuilding the city of Milan. These cities were 
able to withstand the power of Frederick, who, after va- 
rious reverses, was willing to conclude a treaty at Con- 
stance, which acknowledged their independence as separate 
communities. 

Here then, in that fertile and delicious valley, enclosed by 
the Alps, the Apennines, and the Gulf of Venice, we find 
the first establishment in Europe of popular freedom. It is 
here, in Italy, the land consecrated by poetry and the arts, 
that we are to seek the cradle of modern liberty. Nor can 



12 FREEDOM IN ITALY AND THE ROMISH CHURCH. 

the historian who would trace effects to their legitimate 
causes, fail to perceive, in powerful co-operation with these 
events, the agency of the representative assemblies and 
liberal policy of the Roman Catholic Church ; nor the crown- 
ing results of Justin's Pandects, which were discovered and 
diffused in the eleventh century. Free institutions were 
established in the cities of France, Germany, and Flanders, 
about the year 1300. From the free towns of Switzerland 
sprang the celebrated league of the Forest Cantons, a com- 
munity having for its model the confederated cities of Italy. 
This condition of things remained undisturbed by the con- 
vulsions which ensued, down to the epoch of the Lutheran 
reformation. 

In England, free principles lay embedded in the Anglo- 
Saxon trunk, notwithstanding the startling paradox of Sir 
James Mackintosh, that the institutions of England, during 
the Saxon dynasty, were " democratic and popular" only 
with reference to the nobles. We find the usurping Henry 
I. and Stephen, promising at the beginning of their re- 
spective reigns, to restore the Saxon institutions, a pledge 
always acceptable to the people, and the most likely to con- 
ciliate their personal regard. It was to secure the restitu- 
tion of these Saxon laws, after the Norman conquest, that 
blood and treasure, in many an outbreak, were unavailingly 
wasted. These Saxon laws, which breathe so much of the 
essence of enlightened freedom, form, together with Saxon 
customs and Saxon immunities, the groundwork of the 
English common law at the present day ; — a system whose 
highly liberal genius and plastic power constitute its value 
and its glory. It was this leaven, which, steady and unseen, 
worked its way amidst the errors and vices of princes, the 
turbulence of nobles, and the ambition of pontiffs. 



FREEDOM IN ENGLAND. 13 



The effect of these struggles for Uberty, was hardly per- 
ceptible until the reign of Henry the Seventh. Rights then 
began to be defined, and a more distinct idea of civil liberty 
to be entertained among the commons. It was then that 
the tender germs of popular rights were nourished and in- 
vigorated by an intimate commerce with Flanders, where 
the people were tinctured, by means of their municipal pri- 
vileges, with more enlarged and juster conceptions of popu- 
lar government. Before the close of the reign of Henry 
the Third, the English ParUament assumed, in form, much 
the appearance it now wears ; the right of representation 
being admitted among that portion of the community who 
resided in boroughs and cities. This right of representa- 
tion was gradually extended and amplified by a greater 
incorporation of popular rights, until it grew at length to 
that imperfect image of the British constitution, which the 
late reforms have rendered in practice more consonant with 
the genius and theory of the common law. 

This meagre reference to several prominent events in the 
history of modern Europe, will serve to illustrate the extent 
to which free institutions had been carried, before the settle- 
ment of the North American Provinces. It will show how 
little room there was for political discovery by any of the 
colonists, and that all which remained, was to adapt the eter- 
nal principles of civil freedom— that freedom which the page 
of history unfolded, or their own ancestors had transmitted 
to them— to the peculiar circumstances of their situation. 
It will show that the cause of popular sovereignty, the 
right of the majority to govern, the principle of legislative 
representation, all had their birth before the episcopal refor- 
mation was established in England under Edward the Sixth, 
and before Puritanism or Quakerism had an existence. 



14 PURITANISM IN ELIZABETH'S REIGN. 

Let us now glance at the origin of Puritanism in England, 
and observe the features which characterized its first de- 
velopement there. We shall then be able to see with what 
integrity the Puritan colonists carried out the principles for 
which they were contending in the old world, or enlarged 
them upon a theatre in all respects suited to their display. 

The early age of Puritanism, like the primeval age of all 
new doctrines and opinions, was marked by fervour and 
extravagance. It was the first-born offspring of the art of 
printing, and the revival of letters, under the nursing care 
of the early reformers. The austerity of life and doctrine; 
the rejection of human learning; and the grotesque and 
whimsical names which were given to children; — these 
exhibit a state of mental riot, a height of religious frenzy, 
having few parallels in the history of the human mind. 

Bishop Burnet alleges that there was the strongest dis- 
position, in the predominant church, to treat the moderate 
Puritans with indulgence and lenity. The concessions of 
Elizabeth were indignantly rejected by the stauncher Puri- 
tans, who replied, in the language of Moses to Pharaoh, 
" there shall not a hoof be left behind."* These prose- 
cuted their opposition to episcopacy with all the ardour of 
reformers, and all the enthusiasm of zealots. Having sub- 
mitted, in a formal admonition to Parliament, their famous 
Platform of a Churc/i reformed, they proceeded in a second 
address to that body, to declare their resolution to become 
^^ their own carvers'^ in a change. They strenuously incul- 
cated the dogma, that theirs was the only true churchy and 
as such was alone entitled to toleration. These senti- 
ments were followed by acts, which, in their tendency and 

* Appendix B. 



SOME PURITANS GO TO HOLLAND. 15 

expressed design, were to precipitate a religious and political 
revolution.* Then commenced, on the part of England, 
B. system of severe and coercive legislation, which cannot 
be justified or palliated, however it may be defended, on 
the ground of a supposed political necessity. 

To escape from laws which licensed power had imposed, 
or their own zeal and temerity had invited, some of the 
Puritans fled from their native land to seek peace and tole- 
ration among their brethren in Holland; a country on 
which the reformers had shed the brightest glory of the 
Reformation. In Holland they found an asylum from the 
intolerance of English legislation, and enjoyed their peculiar 
worship without molestation or restraint. But induced by 
an unhappy feud, or led by the pruriency of gain, or warmed 
by the prospect of founding a religious settlement in a new 
and unpeopled country, they removed in the year 1620 to 
New Plymouth, after enjoying the hospitalities, and partak- 
ing the blessings of the religious liberty of Holland, for a 
period of eleven years.f 

In the mean time the struggle in England, between the 
Episcopal and Puritanical parties grew more intense, and 
exhibited a more political aspect.J The combatants were 

* See Grant's English Church, vol. i. p. 440 ; also Strype's Life of Whit- 
gift, App. p. 139 ; also Strype's Annals, vol. i. p. 148. 

t See Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, vol. ii. p. 405 ; New Eng. 
land Memorial, pp. 17,23-5; Belknap's Biographies, p. 162; Bozman's 
History of Maryland, p. 209 ; Massachusetts Historical Collections, first 
series, vol. iii. pp. 27, 76, and postscript 69. 

X See a very able article in the New York Review for January, 1840, en- 
titled " Politics of the Puritans," ascribed to the Rev. A. B. Chapin of New 
Haven ; also. Reply in the North American Review for March, 1840 ; also, 
note in North American Review for July 1840, pp. 252-274. 



16 THE RELIGION OF THE STATE. 

glowing with anxiety to decide the great question, for 
which they had been so long contending. The issue in- 
volved the fate of the existing religion and with it the ex- 
isting government. Both parties were disputing for the pos- 
session of the great and alluring prize, the religion of the 
STATE. It was the choice of this, not the separation of poli- 
tics from religion — an idea suggested by no party, — which 
divided and inflamed the nation. The selection at that junc- 
ture lay between the Episcopal, which, as represented in the 
person of the monarch, was identified with the political 
state, and Independency, the religious profession of the Puri- 
tans. The question, so long of dubious issue, was at length 
terminated in the temporary overthrow of the Episcopal 
Church, by the decapitation of Charles the First, and the 
establishment of Puritanism in its place, by the elevation 
of Cromwell, as Protector. 

The problem has long since been solved by the deliberate 
judgment of mankind, that the establishment of the Protecto- 
rate did little benefit to the cause of true freedom. Recent 
events in England have brought it into prominent notice, 
and the clamorous zeal of heated partisans, seems almost to 
have silenced the voice of authentic history. But the repub- 
licans and republicanism of that day, bear no affinity, and 
can claim no relationship with either in this country. It 
was, for the most part, a temporary outbreak of sectarian 
ambition or honest fanatical zeal. The embodied spirit of 
chaos and disorder seemed to be let loose upon mankind. 
Many of the actors were pious but visionary men, who 
were moved and inveigled by popular demagogues.* The 
contest had been mainly a struggle for religions ascendancy, 

* Appendix C. 



PUKITAN3 UNDER JAMES I. AND CHARLES I. 17 

in which republicanism or royalty had little to do, except 
that the monarch was the object of attack, by happening to 
be the representative of the dominant church.* Strenuous 
efforts were made for his conversion, by sermons of charac- 
teristic length. Cromwell, who, with many points of great- 
ness, was an usurper and a ^^ant, not satisfied with an 
untinselled Protectorship, sighed for the pomp and glitter of 
a regal sceptre. Charles, though a faithless friend and a 
bad king, possessed many virtues and various accomplish- 
ments. He was sacrificed to Cromwell's ambition and that 
of his armed confederates. Subsequent events prove, that 
the voice of the people was as effectually drowned by the 
din of arms, when Cromwell rose to the supreme power, as 
that of justice had been stopped, in the solemn mockery of 
the monarch's trial. When the army was disbanded, and 
the dread spirit which had controlled and overawed it, was 
no more, we witness the heartfelt acclamations with which 
the national voice hailed the advent of Charles the Second. 
The republicanism of the Protectorate, was a drama, which, 
for a moment, held the world in suspense by the transient 
interest of its scenic illusion. It passed away like a 
shadowy cloud, leaving but faint traces of its existence, 
upon the political horizon of the kingdom. Royalty was re- 
stored ;-T-not by the force of arms, or the tricks of diplo- 
macy, but by the hearty and unbought consent of the 
people. 

But it was before the death of Charles and the establish- 
ment of the Protectorate, that the Pilgrims settled in New 
England. Suffering as those of the colonists did who came 

* See Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i. pp. 493, 441. 
3 



18 CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

from England, during the reigns of the first James and 
first Cliarles, no alternative was presented but conformity 
or exile.* From Holland, where they had lived in tran- 
quillity, free from compulsion or restraint, they came to this 
country, with the security of a written Charter, and followed 
by the a3gis of the British Constitution. They carried with 
them some knowledge of the liberal maxims contained in the 
Roman pandects; of the lofty opinions disseminated by an 
enlightened and untrammelled press; of those immunities 
which had been conferred upon the boroughs and cities of 
Europe; — and in addition to all these, they had inhaled, 
from their earliest infancy the free atmosphere of the Eng- 
lish common law, — that law, which, like an unfailing stream, 
had rippled down to them through a succession of opposing 
ages, from the clear and uncorrupted fountain of Anglo- 
Saxon liberty. They remembered the hardships to which 
they had been exposed in their native land, by the statutes 
against nonconformity ; and they remembered the country 
of their exile, where the blessings of love and friendship 
were cherished, because the genius of freedom there, had 
checked and rebuked the genius of persecution. 

The Charter of Massachusetts, granted in 1628, con- 
ferred upon the corporators extensive powers for trade, 
commerce and self-go vernment.f It united the character 
of a trading community to that of a municipal corporation, 
with liberal privileges. The principles of the English 
common law, being guaranteed to the colonists, every 
freeman of the corporation was entitled to a vote, in the 
enactment of laws and the choice of governor and assist- 

* See Appendix, D. 

t Vide Cliartor in Hazard's State Papers, vol. i. p. 239. 



FREEDOM OF CHARTER ABRIDGED. 19 

ants. The idea of universal suffrage, if not verbally- 
expressed in the Charter, was plainly in the minds of its 
framers, and by a sound construction of the instrument, 
embraced within its spirit. There cannot be a doubt that 
the colonists might, if they chose, have planted upon such 
a foundation, that great pillar of republican freedom.* 

But the colonial idea of freedom was different from that 
which the expression conveys, at the present day. Tests 
were applied, which, as they connected religion with the 
political rights of the colonists, were alike in abridge- 
ment of the Charter and repugnant to liberty. In the year 
1631, a year after the colonial government was removed 
to this country, it was promulgated that no man should be 
admitted a freeman, who was not a church memhcr.-\ As 
none but Puritans could be admitted to church commu- 
nion, it followed from this decree that all other sects 
were at once disfranchised. This law, which excluded 
from the right of citizenship, a great majority of those who 
were entitled to it under the Charter, continued in force 
until the dissolution of the governmentj 

The principle of so prescriptive a policy, was asserted 
by a most arbitrary act, before it received a legislative 
sanction from the General Court. In the year 1628, one 
year after the first settlement of Massachusetts Bay, Endi- 
cott sent back to England, as seditious persons, two of the 
most respectable colonists, whose religious opinions did not 
permit them to renounce the liturgy of the English Epis- 
copal Church. § This act was subversive of the right of 

* See Appendix, E. 

t See note upon the authority of Letchfurd, in Hutch. History of Massa- 
chusetts, vol. i., p. 30, 

t Ibid., vol. i., p. 31. ^ Ibid., p. 19. 



20 ALL «UT rUKlTAiNS DISFIJANCIIISED. 

private opinion, and struck at the fundamental principles of 
freedom. Four years after the accession of Charles the 
Second, the colonists received from the throne an emphatic 
admonition, and were enjoined *' to permit such as desire it 
to use the Book of Common Prayer, without incurring any 
penalty, reproach, or disadvantage; it being very scanda- 
lous," — continues the admonition — "that any person should 
be debarred the exercise of their religion, according to the 
laws and customs of England, by those who were indulged 
icitk the liberty of being of what profession or religion they 
pleased"* 

But this obnoxious feature of the colonial system of 
Massachusetts, was abolished in appearance only, after 
the Restoration. It continued in practice to exist,f and 
we are informed by an eminent writer, that in the year 
1676, "five-sixths of the colonists were in fact disfran- 
chised by the influence of the ecclesiastical power."J Its 
baleful influence was felt until the act of settlement, which 
vested the throne, at the revolution, in William and Mary, 
and their Protestant successors. 

This exclusive system was interwoven with the vital 
elements of the colonial policy. President Quincy very 
properly concedes in his Centennial Address, that "Church 
and State were very curiously and efficiently interwoven 
with each other."§ We see the closeness of this connexion 
in the lasting consequences which it entailed. Ttie colonial 
enactment requiring a general assessment for the support 
of public worship, was not abolished until so recently as 
the year 1834. 

* See Appendix, F. t See Appendix, G. t See Story's Dis. p. 55. 

§ Quincy's Centennial Address, p. 32 ; also Felt's Annals, p. 222 ; also 
Hutchinson's Collection of State Papers, pp. 359-361. 



RELIGIOUS ASCENDANCY SOUGHT. 21 

There can be no doubt that the eastern colonists were 
more intent on laying their church establishment upon 
deep and solid foundations, than of rearing a temple of 
civil and religious liberty. In England many a hard- 
fought battle had signalized their struggles for ecclesiastical 
victory. Failing to obtain the political ascendancy of the 
Genevan faith and worship, they sought the shores of North 
America, in order to carry out their long-cherished scheme 
of an ecclesiastical government. The restrictions, there- 
fore, which the colonists imposed on the rights of citizen- 
ship, and the penalties with which nonconformity was 
punished, were in perfect consistency with their views at 
home, and the great purpose of their enterprise. Their 
leading object seems to have been less the establishment of 
civil liberty, than the enjoyment and perpetuity of their 
religious institutions. Absolute political freedom, that free- 
dom which could form the germ of the American republic, 
would have frustrated their primary intention, and proved 
subversive of their design, in braving those untold hardships 
and privations which they fearlessly encountered across 
the Atlantic. 

But it was not alone in the denial of civil rights to all 
who were not church members, that they failed to prove 
themselves the champions of liberty ; but in the active per- 
secution of those who were thus disfranchised. Every sect 
of religion, except that which was established as the slate 
religion of Massachusetts, was the subject of prohibition 
and punishment. 

*' They re-enacted," says Bancroft, " the worst statute in 
the English code, that of enforcing attendance on the 



22 COLONIAL INTOLERANCE. 

parish church."* A fine was imposed for non-attendance, 
and a general tax was assessed to support the ministry.f 
The sanctuary of home was violently invaded by the 
civil magistrate, to drag to church the lukewarm and dis- 
affected.J A spy was set upon men's words and actions, lest 
one should partake of heresy or the other of disaffection. 
It was thus that an ancient principle of the English law, that 
a man's house is his asylum and castle, was trodden down 
and contemned. In view of the transactions of so unhappy 
a condition of society, the observation of Judge Story is as 
true, as it is descriptive and eloquent, that " the arm of the 
civil government was employed to support the church, 
and the terrors and violence of the Inquisition existed with- 
out its form."§ Liberty of conscience was denied, and 
toleration of the colonial nonconformists preached against 
as a heresy and sin.|| Roger Williams was charged in 
1634 with holding divers exceptionable tenets, one of which 
was " that to punish a man for any matter of his conscience 
is 'persecution.''^ He was banished the colony and settled 
in Rhode Island, the history of which is immortalized by 
the enlightened maxims of that illustrious exile. Their 
treatment of that gallant and generous spirit, Sir Henry 

* Bancroft's History, vol. i. p. 401 ; also Savage's Winthrop's New England, 
vol. ii. p. 142, et seq. t Hutch. Hist. Mass., vol. i. p. 376. 

$ Felt's Annals, p. 257. § Story's Discourse, p. 55. 

II See Biographia Britannica, article Brown (Robert), note F, for a piece 
written by Johnson, a leader of the Brovvnist sect, entitled " Anti-Chris- 
tian Abominations yet reteyned in England." Of the abominations enume- 
rated, the 33d is tolerations. An old New England writer says, " To au- 
thorize an untruth by the toleration of the State, is to build a sconce against 
the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his Chair," 



COLONIAL INTOLERANCE. 23 

Vane, on account of his favouring Mrs. Hutchinson, was 
in pursuance of a hne of policy which seemed to be funda- 
mental. Among the earliest laws of the Massachusetts 
Colony, were five concerning religion. These were so 
rigorous in their punishment of heretics, that the persecu- 
tions which the colonists had endured in England, as dis- 
senters, are pronounced by the author of the Euro-pean Settle- 
ments in America, " to be great lenity and indulgence in the 
comparison."* In the year 1637 an Ecclesiastical Synod 
denounced fourscore opinions as heretical.f Nonconfor- 
mity was synonymous with heresy, which presented such 
multiform and Protean shapes to the argus-eyed theologians 
of New England, that the enumeration and description of 
them are said to cover seven pages of Tlie Ancient Charters. 
Nor did these legislative denunciations lie dead on the 
statute book. A bare mention of the multitude who sub- 
mitted to the infliction of exile or death, or some more igno- 
minious punishment, speak trumpet-tongued of the insult- 
ing triumphs achieved by the ecclesiastical power over the 
hunted, depressed, and degraded cause of social and reli- 
gious freedom.J 

We contemplate with horror the fires of Smithfield, the 
dungeons and auto da fes of the Inquisition, the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, and the penalties of the Star Chamber. 
But the unpitying and remorseless sentence of Endicott,§ 
the governor, who, on one occasion, told his prisoner, " re- 

* See " European Settlements in America," vol. ii. p. 144. Savag-e says in 
a note to Winthrop, (vol. ii. p. 149,) " there was no place left hut England for 
the unhappy schismatics." t Story's Historical Discourse, p. 54. 

X Hutch. Hist. Mass. vol. i. pp. 41, 57, 63, 116-17, 208. 

§ Vide Sewell's History, Quakers, p. 243, et scq. and sparsim. 



24 rURITAN INTOLKRANCE. 

nounce your religion or die," and the sanguinary denun- 
ciations of the General Court, fill us with equal dismay. 
That they who had preached such purity of life and con- 
duct to mankind ; that they who had been exposed to the 
terrors of persecution and fled from it ; that they, forgetful 
of their own precepts and the lessons of their ow^n sad ex- 
perience, should pursue to banishment and death, almost 
every species of nonconformity ;* — displays to us recesses 
in the human mind, which point to a dark and unexplored 
labyrinth in its devious and impenetrable depths. The ex- 
tent to which this violation of the rights of mankind, was 
carried by the Puritan colonists, occasioned amazement 
and alarm among their brethren in England.f Letters 
were written expressive of their disapprobation and con- 
cern.J Even the mild and gentle Isaac Penington, the 
Quaker, was induced to admonish them in several well 
written and truly catholic treatises, of the hostility of their 
legislation to the cause of liberty, to the Christian religion, 
and to the well being of its various professors.§ 

A philosophic and able historian bespeaks the indulgence 
of posterity for such a harsh and sanguinary scheme of 
government, by observing that few in fact were exposed to 
the severity of these inflictions. I am far from wishing to 
magnify what humanity would delight to lessen, but it is 

* Sec Mass. Hist. Coll. 1 st Ser., vol. iii. pp. 53-.5 ; Savage's Winthrop, vol. i. 
pp. 56, 149 ; also, compare Holmes's Annals, vol. i. p. 272, and Knowlcs's 
lafc of Roger Williams, pp. IS4-9. 

t See Mass. Hist. Coll. 2(1 Series, vol. viii. p. 49. 

t Ibid, also 1st Scries, vol. iii. p. 27-70, p. s. 69 ; also BancroOAs Hist. U. S,, 
vol. i. p. 373 (note). 

6 Sec Appendix, H. 



DEATH AND EXILE STOrPED BY CHARLES II. 25 

certain that the victims were numerous, considering the 
sparse population of the colony, and the brief period of 
thirty or forty years, during which such laws could safely 
be put in execution.* During the Protectorate, and the 
civil troubles which preceded it, these severities were 
unknown or connived at in England. Upon the restora- 
tion of monarchy, they were prohibited by royal interdict,! 
and after that period few, if any cases of death, for colonial 
nonconformity, in fact occurred.J But the doctrine of 
intolerance towards error, continued to be asserted and 
acted on in practice, till the close of the seventeenth cen- 
tury.§ — The election sermons of the day breathe any 
thing but the freedom of the Gospel. The Rev. Mr. Hig- 
ginson in 1663, the Rev. Mr. Sheppard in 1672, and Presi- 
dent Oakes in the following year, all denounce the idea of 
religious liberty, as the offspring of delusion, or the specious 
plea of infidelity. A clergyman of Ipswich, Massachusetts, 
by the name of Ward, who wrote in 1645, and whose effu- 
sion is quoted in Belknap, observes, " it is said that men 
ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is persecu- 
tion to debar them of it. I can rather stand amazed than 
reply to this. It is an astonishment, that the brains of a 
man should be parboiled in such impious ignorance." 

* See Appendix, L 

t See Mandamus to the Government of New England, issued by order of 
Charles II., dated 9th September, 1661,in Sewel's History, p. 272, (Lond. ed. 
fo. 1725); also Hutch. Hist, of Massachusetts, vol. i. p. 219. 

t Judge vStory says, "Persecution became less frequent because it v^^as 
less safe." See Story's Hist. Disc, p. 55. 

§ See Appendix, K. 

4 



26 NOT I3IPUTARLE TO THE AGE. 

President Oakes tells us, in 1673, that he looks " upon 
toleration as the first-born of all abonnination."* 

A further extenuation is attempted by the apologists of 
the New England Puritans, in attributing the rigour of 
their political policy to the age, as one of religious intole- 
rance.f But the remark is not applicable to Holland, 
where religious liberty, in that age, was fully established, 
and where the Plymouth colonists themselves enjoyed per- 
fect toleration, for a period of ten years. It is not true of 
Lord Baltimore, Roger Williams, and William Cod- 
dington, who had introduced into their respective settle- 
ments, the enlightened and catholic maxims of an enlarged 
social freedom. It is not true of William Penn, who, while 
the New England ecclesiastics were denouncing a senti- 
ment favourable to toleration as a heresy, and its practice 
as a sin, was preaching to the crowned heads of Europe 
the impropriety of tests; — a doctrine, whose feasibility he 
afterwards beautifully illustrated, in making universal tole- 
ration the basis of his colonial system in Pennsylvania. 
Thus we do not find these sentiments maintained in the 
neighbouring colony of Rhode Island,{ so early as 1634, 
nor among the Catholics of Maryland in 1632, nor among 
the Quakers of Pennsylvania, in 1682, nor among their pre- 
decessors, the Swedes and Dutch, either in that province, 
or in the colony of New York. The mistaken system of 
Elizabeth and James, was sustained upon the inadequate 
plea of state necessity; — but the liberal opinions of the 

* Vide Belknap's Hist, of New Hampshire, vol. i., pp. 71-5. 

t Sec Hawcs's Tribute, «fec. p. 139, and many others. 

t Vide, Hutch, flist. of Massachusetts, vol. i. p. 453, (No. XI. Appoudix.) 



PENAL LAW AND THE INDIANS. 27 

age in a portion of cultivated Europe, and especially its 
generous and Christian spirit on this side of the Atlantic, 
opposed themselves to the demons of intolerance and per- 
secution. 

In a disquisition of this nature, a reference is necessary 
to the punitory system of the colonists. A society which 
is touched v^^ith the spirit of genuine liberty, will treat the 
humblest and most degraded of its members, with all the 
lenity which is compatible with the existence and safety of 
the social state. We find in the colony of Massachusetts, 
a penal code remarkable for the multiplicity of its objects, 
and the ignominy and rigour of its inflictions. Not only 
those offences which are known to the jurist, by the 
name of crimes, were punished with great severity, but the 
lesser morals were watched, and the minor improprieties 
of life were aggravated, into oflJences of grievous turpitude. 
The mind of the General Court seemed to be filled with the 
idea, that the limb which was diseased, had better be ampu- 
tated than cured, that the transgressor had better die than 
be reformed. 

Further amplification on this head is needless ; nor shall 
I drag into light the dark and tragical end of a noble race 
of men, whose valour and conduct in resisting the encroach- 
ments of the colonists, showed themselves worthy of a better 
fate. History weeps at the cruelty with which these infidel 
sons of the soil, these peeled and defrauded outcasts of 
humanity have been immolated, on the base shrines of lucre 
and ambition. 

The Colony of Connecticut was settled in the year 1636, 
and not being within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, 



28 THE POLICY or Connecticut. 

adopted a constitution of its own, very similar in its 
provisions to the Massachusetts Charter.* This, as has 
been already observed, was upon the most liberal plan of 
an English Municipal Corporation. We find here the 
same identical spirit which was at work in the elder 
colony, the same contracted views of freedom, and the 
the same intolerant laws.f 

The colonists, having acted without the authority of a 
Charter, presented their petition to the throne, on the ac- 
cession of Charles the Second.J The prayer was com- 
plied with by a grant,§ very similar in its provisions to 
the charter of the " Corporation of Massachusetts Bay." 
The liberal principles of this Charter may be inferred 
from the fact, that it continued to exist as the fundamental 
law of Connecticut, through the changes which neces- 
sarily followed the American Revolution, down to the 
year 1817. 

But, it is contended, that however the Puritan settlers 
may have erred, from the mistaken fervour of religious 
excitement, their civil institutions and the organic plan of 
their church establishment, were fundamentally popular. 
How far and with what limitations, this position may be 
admitted or contested, it is beside my purpose, except 
incidentally, to inquire. The Charters of the Eastern colo- 

* Vide Commission for the governing of Connecticut, March 3d, 1635, in 
Hazard's State Papers, vol. i. p. 321. 

t See Appendix, L. 

X Vide Trumbull's Hist, of Connecticut, vol. i., p. 511, (Appendix, No. 7.) 

§ Vide Charter in " Letters, &c. by R, R. Hinman, Secretary of the State 
of Connecticut," (containing original documents,) p. 174. 



CHURCH PLAN AND COLONISTS OF 1630. 29 

nies, though emanating from the free grace of the English 
monarchs, though framed under the eye of the prerogative 
race of the Stuarts, comprehended in their design and 
spirit, the substantial elements of public and private free- 
dom. To what extent these seminal principles were 
pushed, and whether in the whole tendency of the colonial 
scheme, the cause of social right and the republican theory 
were advanced, are questions which depend upon the policy 
adopted, and the prevailing sentiments of the people. 

The great lines of the social domain have now been 
traced, and some of its prominent regions explored. It is 
evident from the survey, that in the civil disabilities im- 
posed on all sects but one; in the union of Church with 
State ; in the secular ascendancy of hierarchs ; and in the 
unrelenting treatment of nonconformists; — the rights of 
mankind were better protected in England, than in the 
Puritan colonies.* In all these, there was a virtual breach 
of the fundamental written law; a manifest abridgement 
of that freedom which was guaranteed to the world in the 
Royal Charter.f It remains that I should glance at the 
political views of the leading minds in the colonies, in order 
to observe how the theocratic principles of their govern- 
ment, inspired an abhorrence of monarchy, or a preference 
for democratic institutions. 

The emigrants, who sailed in the Arabella from Eng- 
land, in the year 1630, left behind them a curious and 
pregnant document.J It is in form, an epistolary missive 

* See Appendix, M. 

t Vide David Humphrey's " Historical Account of the Propagation 
Society," p. 38-9. 

t See Hutch. Hist of Massachusetts, vol. i. pp. 431-2, (Appendix, No. 1.) 



30 OF LORD SAY AND OTHERS. 

to their " reverend fathers and brethren of the Church of 
England." The adventurers earnestly deprecate, in this 
paper, any misconstruction of the objects of their enterprise. 
They call themselves, his "Majesty's loyal subjects,"* and 
with many other kindly expressions, say, "we esteem it an 
honour to call the Church of England, from whence we 
rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native 
country where she specially resideth, without much sad- 
ness of heart, and many tears in our eyes." 

Six years subsequent to this event, and eight before the 
royal tragedy which preceded the Protectorate, a proposi- 
tion was made by certain gentlemen of the English nobility 
to remove to Massachusetts.! This overture was received 
and deliberately considered by the inhabitants. In the 
correspondence which ensued, it appears that the Rev. 
John Cotton, one of the most important and influential 
men of the New World, as well as the other ^'lead- 
ing men,^''X of the colony whom he consulted, were 
opposed on principle to a republican polity. As a " church 
government,''^ — such is Cotton's language, — " was justly 
denied to be democratical," the colonial freemen were 
willing to adopt any other political form which did not 
intrench upon this distinctive organization. In answer to 
the first of the inquiries or "demands" propounded by these 
noblemen, the colonists say,§ " two distinct ranks we wil- 
lingly acknowledge from the light of nature and Scripture ; 

* See Appendix, N. 

t Vide, Hutch. Hist, of Massachusetts, vol. i. p. 4.33, (Appendix No. 3,) 
et seq. 

t Ibid. p. 439, (Appendix, No. 3.) 
§ Ibid. p. 439, (Appendix, No. 5.) 



COLONISTS OPPOSED TO A REPUBLIC. 31 

the one of them called princes, or nobles, or elders, 
amongst whom gentlemen have their place ; the other the 
people." In the eighth demand, these noblemen require 
that the governor " shall ever be chosen out of the rank of 
gentlemen." The answer is, " we never practise otherwise, 
&c., choosing them out of approved known gentlemen, as 
this year, (1636,) Mr. Vane." In Cotton's letter to Lord 
Say,* after declaring that he should " never fear to betrust 
a greater commonwealth than theirs, under such a per- 
petua dictatura as his lordship should prescribe," he is 
thus explicit upon the subject of his political preferences. 
" It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the 
setting forth of God's House, which is his church, than to 
accommodate the church frame to the civil state. Demo- 
cracy I do not conceive thai ever God did ordain, as a fit 
government, either for church or commonwealth. If the 
people be governors, who shall be governed ? As for 
monarchy and aristocracy, they are both clearly approved 
and directed in Scripture, yet so as referreth the sov^e- 
reignty to himself, and setteth up theocracy in bolh, as the 
best form of government in the commonwealth, as well as 
in the church." These celebrated answers and letter yield 
all honour to hereditary dignity, if accompanied by per- 
sonal virtue ; they both express repugnance to a demo- 
cracy ; and are indifferent whether a monarchy or aristo- 
cracy be established, so only that the fundamental prin- 
ciple of church membership be recognised.f 

* Vide, Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, p. 436, vol. i,, ct seq. 
(Appendix, No. 3.) 
t Sec Appendix, O. 



32 ACTS OF CONIVECTICUT AND PLYMOUTH. 

A quarter of a century after this memorable correspon- 
dence, as we have seen, the colonists of Connecticut, for the 
first time, approached the English throne in the form of a 
petition for a Royal Charter.* True to the sentiments ex- 
pressed by their brethren of Massachusetts, they delicately 
refer to " the calamities of the late sad times," and pro- 
claim their unwavering loyalty, during the storms of the 
Protectorate, by intimating as their reason for not having 
petitioned before, their willingness " to receive power and 
privileges from none other than their lawful prince and 
sovereign"] 

What course of policy was adopted by the Massachusetts 
and Connecticut colonies, on the accession of the English 
Protector, cannot, from the absence of historical evidence, 
be now ascertained. In the colony of New Plymouth, 
Mr. Baylie informs us, that on the interruption of the royal 
sway, by the death of Charles, the oaths of office underwent 
a change. But the colonists did not prescribe by a formal 
act or resolution, the terms of a new oath, which, in the 
event of political reverses to the ascendant party in the Eng- 
lish state, might read awkwardly against the colony.J In- 
stead of this they simply blotted out of the record, the words 
of allegiance to King Charles and his successors, and in- 
terlined, " the government of England as it now stands." 
On the restoration of monarchy, in the person of a 
second Charles, no documentary notation was necessary to 
annul the former proceeding. This was more conveniently 

* Vide Petition in Trumbull's Hist. Conn. vol. i. p. 517 (Appendix.) 
t See Appendix, P. 

t Vide Declaration by Plymouth, of 'W//e undnuhted rig/il^' of Charles II. 
to the Crown, Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii. p. .')90. 



GRATITUDE DUE TO NEW ENGLAND. 33 

and summarily effected by having the interlineation effaced 
and restoring the original language. 

The other colonies of New England were modelled upon 
the two most ancient and prominent, whose regulations and 
policy I have rapidly sketched. They had no hardships to 
complain of, arising from the illiberality or restricted privi- 
leges of their Charters. Each contained the grant of ample 
political powers, especially the Charter of Maine; and as in 
the case of Connecticut, the Royal Charter which was given 
to Rhode Island, not only survived the shock of revolu- 
tionarv convulsions, but it has remained to the present day, 
through all the troubles which succeeded them, in the place 
of a Constitution, framed after the republican pattern. 

History then does not support the positions of the New 
England historians. It shows that the principles of an en- 
larged social freedom, as these principles are recognised at 
theV-esent day, in this country, do not owe their existence 
to the Puritan adventurers, but that they have triumphed in 
spite of the opposition of an organized and illiberal hostility. 
But though the eastern colonies did not set a bright ex- 
ample of political and religious liberty, yet there are points 
of attraction in the Puritan character, which warm our hearts 
with gratitude, and inspire the strongest sentiments of ad- 
miration and applause. They were men whose virtues, 
invigorated by adversity, were remarkable for the mtegnty 
of heart with which they were sustained. The fruits of their 
theological tenets, though enjoining the observance of much 
austerity, were visible in the purity of their private manners, 
and the fidelity of their public acts. In their lives they 
were self-denying and ascetic ; severe and exacting in their 

5 



34 CIVIL FKEEDOM THE UNION OF 1643. 

requisitions of others ; inflexibly honest and rigidly just upon 
themselves. 

The Puritan character in New England, however we 
may deplore its excesses, was admirably suited by its firm- 
ness and energy for settling a new country. The policy 
adopted, was well calculated to excite amongst the admitted 
freemen, the liveliest ardour for institutions, which would 
not intrench upon their own rights and privileges ; and to 
sow broad-cast the seeds of morality and knowledge. 
Whatever repugnance Cotton and the leading colonists 
may have felt to a democracy in form, the internal govern- 
ment had many of the attributes of popular freedom. The 
right of trial by jury, common representation in the General 
Court, and a system of civil jurisprudence, remarkable for 
its equity and wisdom, are all so m.any monuments to the 
heads which planned, and the hands which built the colo- 
nial structure. 

It cannot be denied that the union of the New England 
colonies in 1G43, was productive of the greatest conse- 
quences to their stability and strength. The apprehensions 
of the first colonists were divided between invasions from 
the Indians, and the encroachments of more insidious ene- 
mies. A confederacy was suggested, by the concurring 
circumstances of nearly contemporaneous settlements, a 
common ancestry, proximity of situation, uniformity of 
faith,* and community of danger. This ancient union 
bound together citizens in political ties, who were already 
united in the closer bonds of religious fraternity. It made 
the hearts of the different colonies beat in unison, as if by a 

* Sec Appendix, Q. 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 35 



common impulse, and in obedience lo a common law. 
What one colony felt, was faithfully transmitted to the rest, 
as by the necessities of a common nature. This social and 
religious fellowship has engendered feelings of affinity be- 
tween the sovereignties of New England, which continue 
to the present day, to an extent which does not exist in any 
other portion of the American Union. This early colonial 
union was, no doubt, the prototype of the thirteen confede- 
rated colonies, which, upwards of a century after, declared 
themselves independent of the mother state; and asserted, by 
the most determined and chivalrous valour, their abihty to 
maintain that declaration ;— a conception which, if it did 
not confer, at least largely contributed, by its influence and 
positive benefits, to the establishment of an early peace and 
a national existence. 

But the greatest blessing which New England has con- 
ferred upon mankind, and for which, her sons, to the latest 
posterity, owe a debt of gratitude to their fathers, is the 
grand system of Common Schools. Connecticut claims to 
have led the van in this great enterprise, under the direction 
of Davenport and Eaton ;— names which are associated 
with the formation of the New Haven colony, and whose 
memories must be cherished by their successors, with the 
proudest respect and the warmest filial love. The system 
was introduced almost contemporaneously into Massachu- 
setts, whose example was soon imitated by the other Puri- 
tan colonies; so that now there exists no country in the 
world, where the faculties of the common mind have been so 
Hberally cultivated, nor where education is so universally 
diff'used, nor where it is placed on a more enlightened and 
permanent basis. It was this, the best preparation which 



36 THE EAKLY LITERATURE OF NEW ENGLAND. 

could be made for the reception of the principles of the 
American revolution, which, co-operating with the internal 
organization, made the people ready as one man to assert 
and sustain them. — It cannot be forgotten that the zeal for 
learning which marked the early Puritans, in this country, 
was an advance on the system of English Puritanism. If we 
may judge by the doctrines of the English Puritan pulpits 
and the witty reproof of South,* the English Independents 
held human learning in low estimation, and its possessors 
in disrepute or contempt. But the New England clergy, the 
Puritan as well as the Episcopal, have been distinguished 
from the earliest period, for their untiring and matchless 
devotion to letters. Several of them received the highest 
honours of foreign universities, and many may safely be 
compared in erudition, with the most learned men of their 
age in Europe. Not to speak of the multitude of lesser 
lights, of the dii gentium minores, I might mention Jonathan 
Edwards, the celebrated author of " The Freedom of the 
Human Will," Dr. Samuel Johnson, Stiles, Hopkins, and 
many others, as men equally remarkable for their profound 
attainments and fervid piety. The learning of the Eastern 
colonies, though for a long time wasted in polemical disqui- 
sitions, or obscured by the literary follies of anagrams, puns, 
and conceits, rose to higher dignity after the age of Anne. 
The literary appetite began to loathe the grotesque and un- 
natural Du Bartas, once their choicest poetical disk, for 
sentiments and images more just and classical ; and the 
fever of religious controversy, though long maintained at a 
high point, subsided gradually into a more tranquil, settled, 
and healthful temperature.f 

* See Appendix, R. t See Appendix, S. 



THE SOUTHERN COLONIES. 3f 

Having thus rapidly surveyed the Eastern colonies, and 
marked the free principles contained in their Charters ; hav- 
ing observed the opportunities which these afforded for the 
engraftment of an enlarged and comprehensive freedom ; 
and observed the nature of that which was introduced; — let 
us glance at some of the more southerly provinces, in order 
to estimate their probable influence in the conception and for- 
mation of our present form of government. I shall not here 
speak of New York and New Jersey, where the most gene- 
rous aspirations were cherished, from the earliest times, in 
favour of rational liberty.* Nor shall I speak of Virginia, 
Georgia, and the Carolinas, where the warmest love of 
freedom, mingled with a high and romantic chivalry, dis- 
tinguished their early annals.f It will sufficiently meet the 
objects of this Discourse to select two colonies, the religious 
tenets of whose planters, were equally obnoxious with the 
Eastern colonists, to the penal enactments of England against 
nonconformity. In doing this, it will be seen how un- 
founded and gratuitous are the assumptions of those writers, 
who would monopolize for the eastern portion of the Ameri- 
can Union, all the honest fame resulting from a steady, 
enlightened, and liberal preference for free institutions. 
With this view, I shall confine myself to the colonies of 
Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

The Royal Charter of Maryland, granted in the year 
1632, laid a broad foundation of civil and religious liberty.J 

* See Ramsay's History of the United States, vol. i. pp. 175-182, et sparsim. 
t Ibid., pp. 26-33, 158, et sparsim. 

t See Charter in the original Latin, in Haz. Hist. Col. State Papers, vol. i. 
p. 327 ; translated in Bozman's Hist, of Maryland, vol. ii. p. 9, et seq. 



38 MARYLAND CHARTER AND POLICY. 

In one of its features, it has been censured as savouring of the 
Stuart love of prerogative, over laws made by the three 
estates of Parliament. But there is less in the exception 
than might appear, on a cursory perusal. The objectiona- 
ble right, which it confers upon the governor of making 
ordinances, is expressly confined to the brief interval which 
must elapse, before the freemen could assemble ; and the or- 
dinances permitted, are so well defined and narrowly re- 
stricted, as to be stripped of any noxious attribute. As it 
stands, its franchises were copious enough to enable the 
emigrants, to rear a noble and beautiful framework of civil 
and ecclesiastical liberty. 

The oath of the governor, prescribed by himself, promised 
that appointments to office should not be made on account 
of religion, and enjoined upon himself and successors, not 
only protection to all who professed a belief in the Saviour, 
but the punishment of those who should molest others in 
their religious observances.* The assembly followed in the 
year 1649, in the spirit of this self-imposed obligation, by 
repeating and even extending its provision s.f The only 
restriction which narrowed the liberality of this enactment, 
was that which confined its benefits to the professors of the 
Christian faith, — a restriction which tinctured subsequent 
statutes, and led the way to those legal disabilities under 
which the Jewish nation rested, in Maryland, until their 
removal about twenty years ago. 

The reverence in which the early colonists of Maryland, 

* Vide Hazard's Hist. Coll. of State Papers, vol. i. p. 117, for a restrictive 
provision respecting the Church of Rome, in the Plymouth Patent, (granted 
in the 18th year of James I.) 

t See Act in Bozman's Hist, of Maryland, (Appendix,) vol. ii, p. 661, et seq. 



LORD BALTIMORE AND THE ASSEMBLY. 39 

held the character and virtues of Lord Baltimore, was only 
exceeded by their jealous and watchful love of freedom. 
This was put to a severe test, when their venerated proprie- 
tary presented for their acceptance, a code of laws, pre- 
pared by himself with care and sagacity. He expected it 
to be ratified by the Legislature. They cherished the vir- 
tues of their leader, whom they admired for his wisdom, 
respected for his disinterested attachment to liberty, and 
loved for his benevolence. But the adoption of his code, 
implied a subserviency which was incompatible with true 
independence. What was his surprise, when he found the 
fruits of his enlightened and anxious labours, promptly re- 
jected by the Colonial Assembly ! 

In the formation of this body, the pioneers of Maryland 
manifested their adherence to the maxim, " all power is in- 
herent in, and springs from, the people." The whole popu- 
lation assembled, after the manner of the ancient republics, 
to enact laws for their future government. This demo- 
cratical mode of enacting laws, was continued until the 
year 1639, when the augmented number of the colonists 
rendered it impracticable. Then it was that a legislature 
was formed, upon the representative plan,* consisting of 
the proprietary and popular departments. — With such a 
scheme of social order, animated by religion and virtue, no- 
thing could prevent the happiness of the people, but a change 
in the councils of the province. Rational liberty had been 
established. The popular voice was heard in every election. 
The inalienable rights of humanity had been consulted in 

* See Rams. Hist. U. S., vol. i. p. 117 ; also Bozman's Hist. Maryland, 
vol. ii. p. 109. 



40 MARYLAND LIBERTY. 

the principles of the punitory systenn. The Christian, 
of whatever denomination, conld plead his cause with his 
Maker, without the dread of human restraint or coercion : 
and 

" The poor Indian, whose untutored mind, 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind," 

was aided in his aspirations, and taught to bow the knee, 
at the shrine, not of an idol or a demon, but of a good and 
living Manitto. But alas, the halcyon which, in its tran- 
quil flight, was dipping its pinions beneath the smooth sur- 
face of the social waters, w^as only the harbinger of an 
impending storm. The restless spirit of Puritanism, which, 
upon the supremacy of Cromwell, had bound England hand 
and foot,* and which had shown itself in such unamiable 
phases in New England, penetrated even to the deliberative 
hall of Maryland, and was observable in the legislative acts 
of the Colony.f 

In the year 1654, when the sun of Cromwellian power 
shone in the blaze of its zenith, various acts and orders 
were passed by the General Assembly, under " Commission 
from his highness, the Lord Protector." Among these is 

* Vide Walker's " Sufferings of the Clergy," part i. p. 200 ; also Robert- 
son's Hist, of America, vol. ii. p. 259 ; also Harris's Life of Cromwell, p. 437 ; 
though a very partial work. See, among the migrations to Virginia to es- 
cape the danger of the Protectorate, John Washington, the ancestor of the 
Father of his Country. Rams. Hist. U. S. vol. i. p. 35. 

t Maryland and Virginia experienced, in their full force, tiie restrictions 
imposed on commerce and navigation, during the whole period of the Pro- 
tectorate, while in New England, Cromwell permitted these laws to be so 
relaxed as to bo unfelt. Sec Ramsay's Hist. U. S., vol. i. p. 34. Sec his 
peculiar kindness to the colonies of New England referred to, ibid. pp. 59-60; 
also Robertson's Hisl. of Americp., vol. ii. pp. 230-260. 



INTERFERED WITH BY CROMWELL. 41 

one entitled " An act concerning Religion."* The lan- 
guage of the act was devised for the benefit of Puritans 
only; and though the Roman Catholics, who were the ori- 
ginal settlers, seemed to be exclusively pointed at, yet it is 
manifest that the subtle arts of Cromwell's genius had been 
at work, to elbow out of the colony, by sly and indirect 
legislation, another class of religious professors. 

The cruelty of this law is only equalled by its perfidy. It 
illustrates the point and moral of Esop's well known fable 
of the Snake and the Frog. The people whom the tolerant 
acts of the first adventurers, had invited into the settlement, 
turned upon their hosts, and forced upon them the alterna- 
tive of either abandoning the colony, or being deprived of 
their civil and religious franchises. But let it not be for- 
gotten that though Protestant intolerance was thus tempo- 
rarily fostered in the colony ; — a feature, certainly, the most 
repugnant of all others to our institutions at the present day ; 
— yet in all else, — in the liberty established by the Roman 
Catholic settlers ; in the deputed assemblies ; in the trial by 
jury ; and in the diffusive right of popular suff'rage ; the 
people cherished with watchful circumspection, all the out- 
works of a republican state. 

If we consider the moral and political condition of pro- 
vincial Pennsylvania, we shall perceive, where, in common 
with Maryland, and the more southern as well as the other 
middle colonies, the genius of freedom imbibed the milk, 
which warmed and nourished the life-blood of its infancy, 
in this hemisphere. The colonial fabric is not imposing, 

* Vide Bozman's Hist, of Maryland, vol. i. p. 195; ibid. vol. ii. p. 512. 

6 



42 THE VIRTUES OF PENN. 

but commends itself for the simplicity of the whole, and the 
consistency of its several parts. It is easy for rulers to 
make general professions in favour of liberty, while their 
practice may be characterized as tyrannical. Among those 
rulers who figure most prominently in the history of man- 
kind, there are few beside Penn, who firmly carried out 
their principles into act, and made their doctrines the basis 
of their practice. Like Washington, who despised glory 
at the expense of his country and his honour, Penn was 
deaf to the voice of ambition when it called him from the 
path of duty. The friendship of a monarch,* though it 
opened to him the door to title, opulence, and fame, was 
made subservient only to promoting the great principles of 
his life and the welfare of his colony. At the present day, 
the statistics of crime and the lights of experience, are 
slowly combining to impress the unchangeable truth, that 
free institutions without virtue, and mental cultivation with- 
out religious morality, cannot preserve our national ex- 
istence. Above a century and a half ago, Penn taught, 
with a more than human sagacity, that lesson to his pro- 
vince. The following passages from his writings, may serve 
to elucidate his sentiments, and display the standard by 
which he may be judged. These sentiments pour a flood 
of living light on the present day. " Nothing," says he, 
"weakens kingdoms like vice; it does not only displease 
Pleaven, but disables them. * * What then should be 
more concerned for the preservation of virtue than govern- 
ment ? That, in its abstract and true sense, is not only 
founded upon virtue, but without the preservation of virtue 

* James IT. 



penn's sentimEx\ts and acts. 43 

it is impossible to maintain the best constitution that can be 
made. * * In the many volumes of the history of all ages 
and kingdoms of the world, there is not one instance to be 
found, where the hand of God was against a righteous nation, 
or where the hand of God was not against an unrighteous 
nation, first or last ; nor where a just government perished, 
nor an unjust government long prospered. Kingdoms are 
rarely so short-lived as men ; yet they also have a time to 
die ; but as temperance giveth health to men, so virtue gives 
time to kingdoms ; and as vice brings men betinies to their 
graves, so nations to their ruin." 

It was upon the foundation of such a theory, that he reared 
his colony. No sooner had the patriarch with his family of 
emigrants, arrived on the shores of the Delaware, than they 
immortalized the place of their landing, by the enactment of 
a code, which proclaims justice to the Indian, clemency to 
the offender, and toleration to every believer under Heaven. 
But these acts however vital in their relations to a rational 
scheme of liberty, it was well known would prove an 
empty and delusive boon, to an ignorant or a vicious popu- 
lation. It was therefore enacted, that schools should be 
provided, at the public expense, for the poor ; and industry 
and trades were enjoined, to keep them from idleness and 
preserve them from want. A provision of the Great Law, 
required that ^' the laws shall be one of the books taught in 
the schools" of the province. It is not necessary here to 
say more, respecting the treat}^ made with the Indians 
under the spreading elm of Shackamaxon, than that it is 
the only treaty, which the historical records of all time 
have preserved to us, which, according to the Abbe 
Raynal, was nemr sirorn to, and never broken. One of (he 



44 penn's views of liberty. 

articles of Penn's " Certain conditions and concessions," 
&:c., agreed to by the intended emigrants in 1681, pro- 
vides that a jury, to consist equally of Englishmen and 
Indians, were to decide all differences between them.* 
This unusual concession of privilege to a savage tribe of 
men, could only have its origin in that deep and unalter- 
able respect for human rights, which governed all the 
actions of the founder. In after times, the right of a 
foreigner to a jury, de medlatate Hvguae, was disputed in 
a court of law, but a judicial decision was pronounced, 
establishing its legality.f Not content with these provi- 
sions in favour of natural liberty, he destroyed the Eng- 
lish rule of primogeniture, and established a more repub- 
lican canon for the descent of estates. 

The political opinions of Penn, may fairly be inferred 
from the civil Regulations, which were adopted for the 
government of his province. His definition of liberty is at 
once enlightened and democratic. It manifests the liberal 
views which he cherished, and his clear conception of the 
true nature of that representative system, which he designed 
to introduce. " Any government," he observes, "is free to 
the people under it, whatever be the frame, icliere the laws 
rule, and the people are parties to those laics; and more 
than this is tyranny, oligarchy, and confusion."{ In con- 
formity with these ideas, he summoned all the inhabitants 
to attend personally, for the purpose of making laws. But 
an assembly so entirely popular, was waived by general 

* See Proud's History of Pennsylvania, (Appendix,) vol. ii., Part I.. No. 1, 
See. 14, p. 4. 

f Respublica vs. Mesca, vol. i. ; Dall. Rep. p. 73. 

\ Vide Preface to the "Frame of tlie Government of the Province of Penn- 
sylvania," in Proud's History of Pennsylvania, vol. ii. (Appendix, No. 2,) p. 7. 



OF THE ASSEMBLY AND WITCHCRAFT. 45 

consent, it being found that it was more convenient to 
appoint delegates to represent the people, in the form of a 
legislature. The legislative body soon after its formation, 
had the power conferred upon it, of originating as well as 
acting on bills, and the treble vote of the governor was 
relinquished as slightly savouring of aristocracy. This 
framework of the province was formed in the year 1682. 
Notwithstanding the flood of one thousand emigrants which 
poured into the settlement, during the first year of its exist- 
ence, and the many reverses which were brought about by 
the unsettled state of political affairs in England, this policy 
continued for many years without a material change. At 
the time when Cotton Mather and his associates were pur- 
suing at Salem, and in other parts of Massachusetts, the 
imputed offence of witchcraft, with an unwise and cruel 
severity, a Pennsylvanian jury, under the eye of Penn, who 
presided at the trial, brought in a verdict, that the accused 
" was guilty of having the common fame of being a witch, 
but not guilty in manner and form as she stands indicted."* 
The minds of the founder and the more intelligent of his 
colonists, were happily exempt from the absurd infatuation 
respecting witchcraft, which prevailed among all classes, in 
some of the sister provinces. The case referred to is the 
only one, which, as it may happen to be viewed, either 
stains or illustrates the judicial annals of the colony. 

It was thus that he attempted to protect from internal ene- 
mies, as he feared no rupture from without, the elements of 

* The curious reader may see an account of this trial, in Hazard's Re- 
gister of Pennsylvania, vol. i. p. 108; also in Colonial Records of Pennsyl- 
vania, vol. i. p. 40. This trial took place on the 27th December, 1683. 



46 FREEDOM AND MURMURS. 

popular freedom. The toleration of all religious professors, 
and the immunity of none from the common burthens, was 
a maxim which formed the corner-stone of the social pile; 
while generous justice to the Indian, and merciful charity 
to the offender, naturally entered as constituent parts of the 
edifice. The whole structure was a simple and unadorned 
but majestic temple, which was consecrated to the one 
purpose of protecting the natural rights and inviolable 
liberties of mankind. 

The principles which were thus asserted and maintained, 
did not die with the great man, who gave them here the 
sanctuary of a home. They continued in energetic opera- 
tion, through the whole period of our colonial history. They 
yet live, dispensing to distant lands, the genius of that spirit 
to which we owe their introduction. 

The long absence of the Founder in England, combined 
— with other causes of alienation — to excite a disposition 
among the colonists, unfavourable to his pecuniary rights 
and interests. They began to murmur at the quit-rents, 
which he had reserved, with their assent, in his convey- 
ances of land ; they withdrew the imposts which had been 
voluntarily granted to him, as a means of revenue; and in 
the fervour of temporary estrangement, they even refused 
to concur in those great schemes of social improvement, 
which lay nearest his heart. Such was the veneration in 
which all united in holding his character, that more well 
founded objections than these, would have been heard only 
in whispers, during his life. But on his demise, old com- 
plaints were revived, and new ones superadded, against his 
successors. The deputy governors, whose indiscretions 
had fanned the first spark of discontent, now by folly and 



PARTY FEELING AND ITS CAUSE. 47 

misgovernment, blew it into a flame. Two distinct parties 
were formed, with opposite views and variant pretensions. 
Those who espoused the cause of the governors, were called 
the proprietary party, and those w^ho arrayed themselves in 
opposition, were distinguished as the popular side. These 
factions became heated against each other, into an irrecon- 
cilable feud. Bickerings and heart-burnings disturbed the 
tranquillity of private life, and wordy turbulence charac- 
terized these parties in the assembly. Dr. Franklin, whose 
Historical Review is now admitted to be only an emana- 
tion of partisan extravagance, enlisted all his sympathies in 
the popular cause. He followed the example of Loyd, the 
celebrated opponent of James Logan, and other champions 
of the people, who figured in the preceding age; and em- 
ploying all the power of his acute and commanding intel- 
lect, in attacking, with the shafts of wit and argument, the 
old bugbears of proprietary right and proprietary preroga- 
tive, he soon made them sufficiently odious. The points to 
which these dissensions gave rise, were warmly disputed, 
down to that period when colonial contests were neutralized, 
in the absorbing question which then presented itself, of 
foreign subjection or national independence. 

The vigilance and distrust of the colonists were no doubt 
at first awakened, by symptoms of political encroachment, on 
the part of the deputy governors, without the warrant of the 
founder. It cannot be denied that this, in combination per- 
haps with other trivial causes, was not without its influence. 
But it may not escape the attention of the philosopher, in 
reading this page of our colonial history, that these alterca- 
tions owed their existence, in part, to the sentiments which 
Penn had himself inculcated in his colony. He had taught 



48 EXTENT OF COLONIAL FREEDOM. 

the colonists to love and cherish constitutional liberty, in its 
most comprehensive sense. He had taught them that as men 
they were all equal; that every one, without distinction of 
class or sect, who believed in the existence of a Deity, and 
owned land at a penny an acre, was a freeman; and that 
the majority in every state were entitled to govern. He 
taught them that humanity had rights, of which even the 
most debasing criminality cannot divest it. He taught them 
that no one was so humble, not even the poor Indian, but 
was entitled to justice, and the offices of kindness and charity. 
Above all, he taught them that every man, whether Chris- 
tian, Jew, or Mahometan, had the natural right to worship 
his Creator in his own way, without having his eyes, when 
turned upward in adoration, to rest upon the suspended 
sword of the civil magistrate, ready to descend upon his 
devoted head. These lessons had been imprinted upon their 
hearts; they were cherished as their best and amplest 
earthly boon ; they were transmitted to their posterity as 
their richest inheritance.* It is hardly necessary to say, that 
the party contests sharpened their vision for the perception 
of distant, perhaps imaginary danger; nor that in the pre- 
tensions, which, as partisans they were found to assume, 
they transcended the doctrines of their great preceptor. It 
is no unusual case in the history of the human mind, to find 
the teacher far behind the disciple, who was indebted to him 
for his original precept. But however extravagant may 
have been some of the political tenets of the popular party, 
among the colonists, those who held them in check, came 
from the strife too deeply imbued with the principles of 

* Sec Appendix, T. 



DTCKINSOIV'S farmers' LETTERS. 49 

natural justice and eternal liberty not to repel with indig- 
nant patriotism all attempts to invade them. True, the 
Royal Charter had expressly reserved to parliament the 
right of imposing taxes;* true, the colonial prosperity and 
social happiness had not been sensibly diminished by the 
exercise of this power; true, as champions of the proprie- 
tary interest, they were united by the closest ties of sym- 
pathy and affection with the mother state; and true, the 
religious scruples of many of the colonists were opposed to 
war. These circumstances would make them deplore the 
occurrence of an open rupture, but could not render them 
insensible to those great principles of freedom which they 
came hither to support and establish. It was these princi- 
ples which made a John Dickinson, whose " Farmers' 
Letters" sowed the seeds of the revolution, and whose 
addresses to the king were as instrumental in precipitating 
that event, as his letters of Fabius were to confirm the 
hearts of the people, when that momentous period was past. 
It was to these principles we are indebted for Charles 
Thompson, whose eulogy is written, in undying characters, 
in his unostentatious and patriotic acts. On the popular 
side stands, beside Dr. Franklin and many others, Dr. Benja- 
min Rush who was not more eminent for his literary and 
medical deserts, than he was decided in his patriotic councils. 
The popular party in truth were not only ready but courted 
the contest. Their swords were sharpened against the 
enemies of their country, by the very arguments with which 
their proprietary antagonists had been so often over- 
whelmed. 

* Vide 20 Sec. of Charter, in Proud's Hist, of Penns. vol. i. p. 185. 

7 



6(> CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 

It cannot be that Pennsylvania, with these facts embla- 
zoned on her early history, will relinquish to the Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut colonies the unparticipated honour, 
of fostering those nnaxims of social liberty, which are justly 
regarded as fundamental, in our present system of govern- 
ment. Like them the external frame of colonial polity was 
popular and democratical; the representative plan was 
adopted ; schools were established ; useful industry was 
promoted ; justice, equality and right were recognised in 
the internal administration. In these respects, all thq, colo- 
nies stand upon the same common ground. But the 
greatest and best, the vital and distinguishing features of 
our present political system, are, the freedom of the state 
from all the trammels of ecclesiastical restriction, and the 
equal eligibility of all churches to its highest honours and 
richest rewards. In the establishment of these, the senti- 
ments of the people derived no support, from the doctrines 
or example of the Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies. 
It may be doubted, if all the colonies had been peopled by 
men of similar views and policy with those of New Eng- 
land, whether the angelic form of religious freedom, now 
our presiding and guardian genius, had ever descended to 
crown the happiness, or bless the social charities of the 
present United States. 

The Puritan settlements permitted freedom to their church 
members, but refused it to all others under the severest pains 
and penalties. Their freedom was that of men who appro- 
priated all human rights as belonging to themselves, while 
they perversely denied them to the rest of mankind,"^ 

* See Hume's Hist. Engd. vol. vi. p, 164. 



IN THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN STATES. 51 

In justification of this policy, it is maintained by one class 
of writers, that the Puritan pilgrimage to New England, 
had in view only the enjoyment of the Puritan religion,* 
and that in order to guard it from danger, defensive laws 
became necessary. Do these apologists forget, that if this 
were the original motive of the enterprise, it was never 
known or communicated to the Parent State ; that the 
emigrants of 1630 ardently professed a different purpose ; 
and that there was no warrant in the Charters for such an 
establishment ?f But admit that this plea displays the real 
groundwork and essential principle of the colonial action ; 
— is the motive assigned, of a character large and disin- 
terested, or limited and selfish ? Where is the boasted 
glory of a system, which requires in its defence the attribu- 
tion of an aim so barren, of a design so humble 1 What 
becomes of the moral sublimity of that example, on which 
the New England historians delight to dwell ? 

The plea of necessity has been the plea of restrictive 
tyranny, from the beginning of time.J If the system of 
exclusion and severity be defended on this ground, what is 
it but the general plea of cruelty and despotism, the world 
over ? The Christians were persecuted by the Jews and 
Pagans, because Hebraism and Paganism were in danger. 
The Protestants endured the persecutions of the Roman 
Catholics, because Catholicism was in danger. The Epis- 

* See Hist. Disc, by Prof. Kingsley of New Haven., p. 46, and many 
others. 

+ See " Historical Account of the Propagation Society" by David Hum- 
phries, pp. 38-9 ; also Robcrtson''s Hist. America, vol. ii. p. 248. 

t See on this subject Harris's Charles I. pp. 232-3. 



5S THESE PKlNCirLES 

copalians, for the same identical reason, retaliated these per- 
secutions upon dissenters. It is the refinement of sophistry 
to teach, that the object of either of these persecutions was 
the preservation or recognition of natural liberty. If it be, 
and \^fear or necessity can excuse wrong or justify oppres- 
sion, then we must snatch from undeserved reproach, from 
the sentence of unmerited obloquy, those tyrants and despots 
whose memories history has so long covered with disgrace. 
The liberty for which the eastern colonists were clamo- 
rous, was the liberty of an aristocracy who monopolize 
every benefit to themselves. It was the liberty of the Barons 
of Runemede, who in their anxiety to restrict the authority 
of the King, and to amplify their own, vi^holly overlooked the 
privileges of the people. It was a liberty which seemed 
less to arise from philosophy than instinct. It was less an 
abstraction, as an inalienable attribute of human nature, 
than the ofl^spring of mistaken religious zeal. 

This slight and imperfect review of our colonial history, 
shows the errors into which those writers have fallen, who 
ascribe so important an agency to the maxims and policy 
of the Puritan fathers, in the establishment of this republic. 
It may be truly said, that the political vine and fig-tree which 
shot forth at the revolution, were not indigenous to this soil 
nor of spontaneous growth, but exotics which were planted 
by the first settlers of the respective colonies, in whose 
shade and beneath whose shelter, they had reposed in other 
lands. They struck deep, and flourished here, by means of 
a propitious climate and a judicious culture. The political 
agriculturist, when he surveys the vast arms which they 



NOT INDIGENOUS. 53 

have thrown over the land, encircling the most distant tracts 
of our territory in their embrace, will trace their roots not 
only to the East, but he will find them mingling whh the 
soil alike of every valley and every hill throughout the ex- 
tensive regions of that Union whose banner waved in com- 
mon triumph at the revolution. 



APPENDIX. 



A.— p. 8. 

Among the works referred to, may be mentioned the various 
replies to Neal's History of the Puritans, which are seldom to be 
met with in New England. Heylin may be thought to have 
erred as much on one side, as Neal on the other. Neal is 
found in almost every library in New England, but the answer 
to that very partial work by Bishop Maddox and Dr. Grey, al- 
most nowhere. As further evidence of the feeling on this sub- 
ject, a collection of the Blue Laws of the New Haven Colony, 
was not to be found in print, except among the curious, until the 
year 1838, the only edition known being that of London, printed 
in 1656. The edition of 1838, published among other curious 
matter, at Hartford " by an Antiquarian," does not, however, con- 
tain the laws previous to the time of Eaton. Those celebrated 
laws never having existed, except in MS. ; are not now in exist- 
ence, the records being lost or destroyed. All we know of them is, 
that portions were doubtless re-enacted in 1655 ; — the history by 
Peters being regarded, for the most part, as fabulous. Our Hart- 
ford Antiquarian observes in his preface, " The compiler is aware 
that some few of the illiberal in this community, may be dissatis- 
fied with the publication of a part of these important antiquities, 
apprehending that the literary or moral character of the Puritan 
Fathers of New England, may be implicated by such publication. 

% % ^ ^ % ^ 

The suppressing, or rather neglecting, their publication for one 
hundred and eighty-two years, is (l\r more reprehensible than 
any thing contained in the Blue Laws themselves." Vide "The 
Blue Laws of New Haven Colony, usually called," &c. &c., by 
an Antiquarian, pp. 6-7, (Hartford, 1838.) 



APPENDIX. 55 



B.— p. 14. 



Vide Short's History of the Church of England, vol. ii. p. 230 
et seq. ibid. p. 259 ; also Fuller, who says in his Church History, 
lib. xi. page 7, " The Puritans of this age (that of Elizabeth,) 
were divided into tivo ranks^ some mild and moderate, contented 
only to enjoy their own conscience ; others fierce and fiery, to the 
disturbance of Church and State." Ibid., p. 178, it is stated that 
Lord Burleigh desired the Puritans to frame a better liturgy than 
the one in use ; thereupon a schism arose, and four distinct parties 
were formed. 

" The first dassis framed a new one, somewhat according to 
\\\efor7)i of Geneva. 

" The seco7id, disliking it, altered it in six hundred particulars. 

*' The tJurd quarrelled at these alterations, and resolved on a 
new model. 

" The fourth classis dissented from the former. 

"Thus," continues Fuller, "because they could not agree 
among themselves, that wise statesman (Burleigh) put them off 
for the present, until they could present him a pattern with a 
perfect consent,'^'' 

C— p. 16. 

See " Some Considerations proposed to the citizens of Lon- 
don," &c., by Isaac Pennington, (Works fo. Lond. 1681,) p. 
140, in which he says, " O ye great ones ! The Lord did not 
throw down the greatness of the nobility, for you to rise up in 
their places," &c. 



D.— p. 18. 

The author of "The European Settlements in America," &c., 
contends that the Roman Catholics were more harshly treated 
than the Puritans, in England, see vol. ii. p. 220. Hawes says, 



56 APPENDIX. 

a sligJit submission to mitred authority, would have made unne- 
cessary their exposure to the privations and hardships of a 
residence in the New World. See Tribute, &c., p. 118-9. 



E.— p. 19. 

The principles of this Charier are readily seen. The grant, 
is in the free and common socage, and not m capite, nor by 
Knight's Service. (Hazard's State Papers, vol. i. p. 245). 
The tenure ofofFice is not for life, or an indefinite period, but is 
made dependent upon conduct, and determinable by \\\q majority. 
The right of election to office, and the right of removing from 
office, are expressly recognised. (lb. p. 248.) The freemen are 
to be chosen by " the governor, (or in his absence, the deputy 
governor of the said Company, for the time being,) and such 
of the assistants and freemen of the said Company as shall be 
present, or the greater number of them so assembled,^'' p. 247. 

Nothing is said in the Charter, respecting the qualifications to 
freemanship, except what is contained in the following passages: 
« That it shalbe lawfall and free for them and their Assignes, at 
all and every Tymeand Tymes hereafter, out of any our Recdmes 
or Domynions whatsoever, to take, leade, carry, and transport, 
for and into their Voyages, and for and towards the said Flan- 
tacon in Newe England, all such and so many of our loving 
Subjects, or any other strangers that will become our loving Sub- 
jects, and live under our Allegiance, as shall ivillinglie accom- 
pany them in the same Voyages and Plantacon. * Pro- 
vided, that none of the saide Persons be such as shalbe hereafter 
by especial Name restrayned by Vs, our Heires, or Successors," 
p. 249. In p. 251, the Charter provides, " That all and 
every the Subjects of Vs, our Heires or Successors, tvhich shall 
"oe to and inhabite the said Landes and Premisses Itereby 
'mencOed to be graunted, and everie of their Children which 
shall happen to be borne there, or on the Seas in goeing thither, 
or returning from thence, shall have and enjoy all liberties 
and Immunities of free and naturall Subjects within any of the 
Dmnynions of Vs, our Heires or Successors, to all Intents^ Con- 



APPETsDlX. 67 

struccons, and Purposes whatsoever^ as yf they and everie of them 
were home ivithin the Reahne of England.'''' 

It is further provided, (p. 253,) that the Company shall '-'■ have 
full and absolute Fower and Authoritie to correct, punishe, par- 
don, gover7ie, and rule all such the Subjects of Vs, our Heires and 
Successors, as shall from 2\jme to Tyme adventure themselves in 
any Voyadge thither or from thence, or that shall at any Tyme 
Jiereafter, inhabits within the Frecints and Partes of Neive 
England aforesaid, according to the Orders, Lawes, Ordinances^ 
Instruccons, and Direccons aforesaid, ?iot beijig repug7iant to 
tlue Laives and Statutes of our Realme of England, as afore- 
said.'^'' 

It is evident from these provisions that the colonists laboured 
under no restrictions, as to the amount of liberty which they might 
give to the inhabitants. The stipulation on the contrary was, that 
they should not be curtailed of any of the liberties and immunities 
which they were entitled to as free and natural-born subjects of 
the Realm of England. Whether the policy adopted disfran- 
chising all v/ho were not church members, no matter what their 
estates or personal respectability, was not an abridgement of the 
rights of British subjects, is a question too plain for discussion. 
The propositions made by the Commissioners of Charles II. to 
Connecticut in the year 1665, contain this requisition, "that all 
men of competent estates, and of civil conversation, (though of 
different judgment) may be admitted to be freemen, and have 
liberty to choose, or to be chosen officers, for the military and 
civil." Letters, &c., by R. R. Hinman, pp. 62-3. 

The word, freeman, in the Charter, was intended at most to 
signify a freeholder, i. e., that every English natural born subject 
who had ^i freehold, should be entitled to the rank of b. freeman. 
Britton, (c. 32,) whose definition is adopted by Blackstone, 
describes a liberuin tenementum or freehold, to be " the pos- 
session of the soil by ^ freeman.''^ 2 Bl. Com., p. 104. In the 
colony of Virginia, according to Beverly, the term was less 
restricted. " "^sqxv freemayi^'' says he, " (by which denomina- 
tion they call cdl but indented or bought servants,) from sixteen 
to sixty years of age, is listed in the militia." Beverly's History 
of Virginia, p. 233. 

8 



58 APPENDIX. 



F._p. 20. 



Hutch. Hist. vol. i. p. 219. But before this, see Sewell's 
Hist., p. 272 (Lond. ed. fo. 1772) for Mandamus from the king; 
also Propositions by his Majesty's Commissioners to the Governor 
and General Court of Connecticut, made April 20, 1665, in which 
are recommended that "all men of competent estates and of civil 
conversation, {though of dijferent judgme7it) may he admitted to 
BE freemen" and " that all persons ofcivil lives, may freely enjoy 
THE liberty oj their consciences^ and the worship of God in that 
ivay ivhich they thiyih hest^'' &c. (See Propositions and Answer 
in Hinman's Letters, &c. being original documents, pp. 62-3) ; 
also Mass. Hist. Coll. 2d Series, vol. viii. p. 76. 

G — p. 20. 

It was necessary for the tninister to certify, that the candidates 
for freedom were o^ orthodox principles , as well as of good lives, 
(fee. See note in Hutch. Hist. Mass., vol. i. p. 31. 



H.— p. 24. 

Vide Isaac Penington's Works sparsim, (Lond. fo. ed. 1681) 
particularly " An examination of the grounds of causes," &c. 
part i. pp. 199, 208, 224, 225, 233, e! seq. ; also "Somewhat 
relating to Church Government," &c. &c. part ii. page 400, et seq ; 
also " Misrepresentations of one concerning Church Government 
cleared," part ii. p. 418, et seq. I lay the greater stress on this 
authority because his father. Sir Isaac Penington, was a member 
of the Parliament who condemned Charles I. and was much tinc- 
tured with admiration of Cromwell. The author here quoted, 
had been an Independent before he became a Quaker, and con- 
tinued to feel through life a more than ordinary solicitude for his 
former party, in opposition to the Episcopalians and Roman 
Catholics. He writes rather in sorrow than in anger. 



APPENDIX. 59 



I.— p. 25. 



An ingenious and well informed writer, but of rather tart 
spirit, eloquently remarks, with reference to the causes which 
stayed the fury of religious persecutions in New England ; 
" Charles was restored — Endicott died, and when the sun seemed 
to be turning into darkness and the moon into blood, the wheels 
of the car of destiny appeared suddenly to roll backward, and 
a glimmer of humanity began to dawn." Vide The Churchman^ 
vol. V. p. 857, May 2, 1835. 



K — p, 25. 

John Checkley, in the first quarter of the 18th century, re- 
printed Leslie on Episcopacy. He was arraigned at Boston, 
heavily fined, and bound with two sureties to keep the peace. 
See also An Act of the Connecticut Colony against Quakers, 
' Ranters, &c. passed in the year 1705, disallowed by Queen 
Anne in Council. See Proud's Hist. Penna., (note) vol. i. p. 465. 

Bradford, in his History of Boston, pp. 49-50, denounces the 
folly of a toleration which may tend to misrule. 



L — p. 28. 

The voluntary compact adopted by the adventurers, in 1639, 
contained no explicit provision respecting religion. They 
only resolved to maintain the faith or discipline " which we 
now profess,^'' which, as is well known, were those of Geneva. 
The penal system was modelled, both in Connecticut and New 
Haven Colony, upon the basis of the Levilical code, which 
punished many offences with death. It is not easy to say what 
was the precise nature of the criminal law, before the time of 
Eaton in 1655, as the early regulations of Connecticut were not 
preserved in print, and some of the manuscript records of New 
Haven are lost, mutilated or destroyed. Of that celebrated 
code which has been denominated " the blue laws," we know 



60 APPENDIX. 

only what can be gathered of its character from contemporary 
annalists, and from the laws of Eaton which succeeded, and in 
some instances preserved them. See infra Appe7idix A. 

M — p. 29. 

Vide on this subject " European Settlements," &c., vol. ii. 
p. 220 ; also Felt's Annals, pp. 175, 327 ; also Isaac Penington, 
who says, in addressing New England, " Look over your 
writings, consider the cause again in a more meek and upright 
spirit, and ye yourselves will easily see, how in your heat ye 
have mistaken, and dealt more injuriously ivitli others than ye 
yourselves icere ever dealt ivith.'''' (Works, Lend. ed. 1681, fo. 
p. 223.); also Sewell's Hist. Quakers, p. 200; also Savage's 
Winthrop, vol. ii. p. 109-149. 

N.— p. 30. 

It NN ill I o observed in Norton's New England IVfemorial, (which 
was written, it is said, on board the Mayflower,) among the reasons 
assigned for the colonists abandoning Holland, was, their desire 
to live under their natural Prince. 

O.— p. 31. 

Vide Order in Massachusetts for proclaiming Charles II. king. 
Hazard's Hist. Coll. of State Papers, vol. ii. p. 593. The address 
of Massachusetts to Charles II., bearing date August 7lh, 1G61, 
displays so ardent a loyalty, that I am tempted, in view of this 
and its other characteristics, to introduce it here, in extenso : 

[Massachusetts Records, 7th August, 1661.] 

To the High and mighty Prince Charles the Second hy the Grace 
ofGod^ King of Great Britain^ France^ and Ireland ,, Uefender 
of the Faith^ c^c. 

*' Illustrious Sir, 

" That Majesty and Benignity both sat upon the Throne where- 
unto your Outcasts made their former Address, Witnes the second 



APPENDIX. 61 

Eucharistical Approach unto the best of Kings, Who to other 
Titles of Royalty, comnnon to him with other Gods amongst 
men, delighted herein more peculiarly to conform himself to the 
God of Gods in that he hath not despised nor abhorred the Afflic- 
tion of the Afflicted, neither hath he hid his Face from him, but 
when he cried he heard. Our Petition was the Representation 
of an Exiles Necessities : This Script, gratulatory and Lowly, is 
the Reflection of the gracious Rays of Christian Majesty: There 
we sought your Favour by presenting to a compassionate Eye 
that Bottle full of Tears shed by us in this Jesimon ; Here also 
we acknowledge the Efficacy of Regal Influence to qualify these 
Salt Waters. The Mission of ours was accompanied with these 
Churches sitting in Sackcloth ; The Reception of yours was the 
holding forth the Sceptre of Life. 

*' We are deeply sensible of your Majesty's Intimation relating 
to Instruments of Satan acted by impulse Diabolical (not to say 
whence he came to us) went out from us because he was not of 
us. God preserve your Majesty from all Emissaries agitated by 
an infernal Spirit under what Appellations soever disguised. 
Luther sometimes wrote to the Senate of Mulhousen to beware 
of the Wolfe Munster. 

«' Royal Sir, 

" Your just Title to the Crown enthronizeth you in our Con- 
sciences, your Graciousness in our affections; — That inspireth 
us unto Duty, this naturalizeth unto Loyalty : — Thence we call 
you Lord, hence a Saviour. Mephibosheth, how prejudicially 
soever misrepresented, yet rejoiceth that the King is come in 
Peace to his own house ; — Now the Lord hath dealt well with 
our Lord the King : May New England under your Royal Pro- 
tection be permitted, still to sing the Lords Song in this Strange 
Land : It shall be no grief of Heart for the Blessing of a People 
ready to perish, daily to come upon your majesty, the blessing 
of your poor People, who (not here to alledge the innocency of 
our cause, touching which, let us live no longer than we subject 
ourselves to an orderly Trial thereof) though in the particulars 
of Subscriptions and Conformity, supposed to be under the Hal- 
lucinations of weak Bretheren, yet craue leaue with all Humility 



62 APPENDIX. 

to say Whether the voluntary quitting of our Natiue and dear 
Country, be not sufficient to expiate so innocent a Mistake, (if a 
Mistake) let God Almighty, your Majesty, and all good Men judge. 
" Now, he in whose hands the Times and Trials ofthe Children 
of Men are, who hath made your Majesty remarkably parallel 
to the most eminent of Kings both for Space and kind of your 
Troubles, so as that vere Day cannot be expected, wherein they 
drove him from abiding in the Inheritence of the Lord, saying 
Go serve other Gods, make ^mu also (which is the Crown of all) 
more and more like unto him in being a Man after Gods own 
Heart, to do whatsoeuer he will : Yea, as the Lord was with 
David, so let him be with your most Excellent Majesty, and 
make the Throne of King Charles the Second both greater and 
better than the Throne of King David, or than the Throne of any 
of your Royal Progenitors. So shall always pray, 
«' Great Sir, 

" Your Majesty's most humble and Loyal Subjects, 

« JOHN ENDICOTT, Governor." 



P.— p. .32. 

See the honeyed expressions of allegiance to King Charles II., 
in an Act passed by Massachusetts against treason, in the year 
1678, the year of the famous Popish Plot, so called. Death is 
denounced for imagining the destruction of the king's person, or 
of the style, honour, or dignity of the kingly office. See also the 
definition of treason enlarged in 1696, Report by Messrs. Ran- 
toul and others, on Capital Punishment (read in the House of 
Representatives of Massachusetts in 1836) p. 67. 



Q.— p. 34. 

See sixth article of articles of co}i federation^ according to which 
two commissioners from each jurisdiction, are to be chosen, 
being all ioi church fellowship icitk us, requires the article. 
i<'TIinnia7i's Letters''^ &c. (being a collection of original Docu- 
ments relating to Connecticut,) p. 33. 



APPENDIX. 63 



R — p. 36. 



In reply to the depreciation of bookish lore by the Puritans, 
South observed, " Granted that God does not stand in need 
of lamian learnings still less has he need of human igno- 
rance.'''' 



S.— p. 36. 

The literary precisians, and purists of the present day, in 
Boston and Cambridge, seem hardly to be the descendants of 
their own progenitors. It is quite opposed to our notions of the 
New England clergy, whom we are accustomed to regard as 
men of grave and sober, if not of grim visage, to find them 
indulging in whimsical conceits, in concocting anagrams, and 
making puns. But so it was. The vice of a quaint age, in 
the mother country, had a prolonged existence in the retired 
colonies of New England. James I., was himself a punster. 
Addison tells us, that his taste for that species of humour, was 
very decided, and that he made {q\s Bishops or Privy Coun- 
sellors, who had not " signalized themselves by a clinch or 
conundrum." Cotton Mather, who was a contemporary of 
Addison, brings these follies down to a later period. Witness 
his Magnolia^ especially his " Remarkables of Divine Provi- 
dence among the people of New England." He is a fair 
representative of a numerous class. The Rev. Mr. Wilson, an 
eminent Puritan divine of an early day, was a noted anagram- 
maker. On the death of Wilson, his memory in turn, was 
appropriately celebrated by anagrams. 

What contributed more than any thing else to the prevalence 
of a bad taste, was the popularity of Dii Bartas, a French poet 
of the age of Henry IV., whose works, in Sylvester's transla- 
tion, was the standard of literary excellence, for a long time, in 
Massachusetts. Every body adopted him as a model, in writing 
verse, and his foolish productions passed through thirty editions, 
A Mrs. Bradstreet, of Massachusetts, whose poetry was in high 



04 APPENDIX. 

repute, received the most delicate and flattering connmendation 
which colonial wit could bestow, in an anagram drawn from her 
name, which made out the words, a second Du Bartas, 



T._p. 48. 

Consult, among other authorities, which might be cited, 
respecting colonial Pennsylvania, Proud's History, Hazard's 
Register of Pennsylvania, in 15 vols., and a History of Penn- 
sylvania, in German, by the late Professor Ebeling of Ham- 
burg. A part of this impartial and learned work, will be found, 
in a beautiful English dress, in the first volume of Hazard's 
most valuable work now referred to. The translator is the 
venerable and eminent Mr. Du Ponceau of Philadelphia, v/ho 
undertook the labour, with no view to profit, but simply to make 
known the high merits of a foreign work to English readers. 
His version terminates at the death of William Penn in 1718, 
comprising about one-fourth of the entire book, which brings 
down the history to the year 1802. See Hazard's Register of 
Pennsylvania, vol. i. p. 341, et seq ; also consult the excellent 
History of Pennsylvania, by Thomas F. Gordon, Esq., of Phila- 
delphia, whose work, though it does not display a full apprecia- 
tion of William Penn's character (ex. gr. p. 176,) is nevertheless 
distinguished for fidelity, discrimination, and talent. See what 
Mr. Gordon says of the constitutions of the other colonies, pp. 
173-4. 



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